None of us knows for certain what the future holds in store, sometimes it’s fun to imagine where present trends, extended into the future, might take us. The Week brings us an example of this that you might enjoy. Author Matthew Walther writes:
I believe that Trump brought the conservative movement to an end. But what its destruction means is something very different from the prophecies of permanent Democratic supermajorities issuing forth from the former president's critics.
About the Trump voters, Walther opines:
Whatever their opinions might have been 20 years ago, in 2021 these are people who, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, accept pornography, homosexuality, drug use, legalized gambling, and whatever GamerGate was about. On economic questions their views are a curious and at times incoherent mixture of standard libertarian talking points and pseudo-populism, embracing lower taxes on the one hand and stimulus checks and stricter regulation of social media platforms on the other.
Like all futurists, Walther is almost certainly wrong about major details of the future he sees, but may also be right about others. This makes his “Barstool conservatives” projection interesting and fun to ponder.
Later ... keen readers might detect an indirect allusion to Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option at the end of the column when Walther writes:
The best that can be hoped for is a kind of recusancy, a limited accommodation for a few hundred thousand families who cling to traditions that in the decades to come will appear as bizarre as those of the Pennsylvania Dutch.
